A new “lest we forget” kind of book will make its debut in a book signing Friday at 2 p.m. at the Demopolis Library.

Dr. Betty Jean Tucker’s book, On a Darkling Plain, is a collection of ten short stories with the unifying theme of the effect of The Great Depression on people in the Alabama Black Belt in the nineteen thirties.

The stories, which are fictional, were written over a period of six decades, beginning with “My Sister Callie,” published in 1951 when the author was a nineteen-year-old student at Alabama College (now the University of Montevallo). “When Poets Lie,” which Dr. Tucker calls her Romeo and Juliet story, was written last year.

Five of the stories have been previously published in literary magazines, and four of them are prize winners. The collection includes various genres, such as allegory, satire, and vintage Southern Gothic.

The book has an introduction by Dr. Norman McMillan, author and professor emeritus of English at the University of Montevallo. Dr. Tucker, a retired English professor, was chairman of the Division of Languages and Literature at Livingston University for twenty years. She is the mother of Dr. Ken Tucker of Demopolis.